Uttama Villain

At one point in Uttama Villain, K. Balanchander quips that he would not make a movie about a man suffering from a terminal brain cancer. "It would be such a cliche!". It is a  meta-commentary on Uttama Villain - which is about the last hurrah of a matinee idol, which needs an interesting mind like Kamal Hassan's to make this cliche work.

Kamal Hassan plays Manoranjan, a super star who acts in commercial potboilers, the kind of films that drive his adulating wife and his skeptic son crazy for entirely different reasons. The film opens to other adulating fans, and a song with an intentionally bad choreography where Kamal Hassan hams it way too up, almost matching the lack of dignity with which his friend Rajinikanth asked Shriya to give him "one time sunshine". When Manoranjan realises that he does not have much time left, he leaves his stardom and the baggage that came with that, to join forces with Margadarsi (played by K. Balachander to whom this film is dedicated), to make the kind of film he wanted to act as a budding actor. It is at this point the meta commentary is made, and is followed by a heartwarming performance, and the effect is amplified by Balachander's recent passing, as he grieves for his disciple's impending demise.

It is interesting to see the economy with which the scenes are written. The movie premier and the launch party provide a platform for most of the peripheral characters (but by no means minor) to come together. K. S. Ravikumar might have made these scenes utterly chaotic, and to Ramesh Aravind's credit he keeps a tighter watch. One of the most fascinating things about the writing is not how the characters steer the story forward, but how they seem to shape Uttama Villain's narrative form, seemingly without the director's aid. But I don't know if the general lack of directorial vision at the expense of interesting story telling is a good thing, or a bad thing, and in that regard, it does not help Ramesh Aravind that his film has Kamal Hassan.

"Uttama Villain" the historical comedy film that Margadarsi and Manoranjan make (thus giving this move its "purely Tamizh" name) is significant, in how this film and Manoranjan's life borrow from each other. But even without regard to this significance, it works mostly well, delivering laughs by deftly recycling Tamil proverbs and idioms ("Pudhu katthi kuthuthu", "Mudivurai illa Kaaviyam naan"). The inner film is almost a "Imsai Arasan 23am Pulikesi", relying on a happy-go-lucky hero, a laughably lecherous villain and a heroine with a sexy midriff. Kamal, Nasser, Pooja Kumar (and Dr. Gnanasambhandan in a rocking role, if his fan is reading) ham it up to extremely verbose (at times funny and thought provoking) semi-classical Tamil lyrics. Anyone unfamiliar with Nasser's work will probably misunderstand his performance as an indication of lack of acting skills. The movie making in the inner "Uttama Villian" itself is extremely primitive (it's like a stage performance where each scene simply leads to the next), and if unlike me, you listened to songs before watching the movie, you are bound to be disappointed. But it fits within the picture of what the outer "Uttama Villain" wants to achieve, and manages to keep you distracted from the realities of Manoranjan's life.

Quite contrastingly, the outer "Uttama Villain" is full of neat performances. Early on, M.S. Bhaskar's character reacts on his belated finding of Manoranjan's illness with a sense of betrayal, considering it as an act of retaliation to his own earlier betrayal. This is a rare moment in the outer "Uttama Villain", when a character loudly vocalizes his feelings. It begins with a hint of self awareness, which seems to progressively collapse under the weight of his sorrow. The next scene where he visits Kamal, is well thought and well executed. Bhaskar betrays a slight sense of guilt, when he reads the lines in the letter that indict him. The staging helps the characters to perform to each other, without overwhelming the audience with their feelings. Many a time, the film tips toes around this territory, and mostly manages to maintain a mood that is sombre but not tear jerking. It also helps that we don't know Yamini (whose name is the best of the movie's word plays), and are not deeply invested in her. But interestingly, M. S. Bhaskar pales into insignificance after this scene. The explanation comes much later, when Manoranjan points to Manonmani (Parvathi Menon who holds herself against Kamal Hassan in another well executed scene, when she first meets Manoranjan), her picture in a sort of a family tree, of people that mean something to him. That's what the outer "Uttama Villain" is about, how Manoranjan makes peace with those that matter to him, and vice versa.

What makes "Uttama Villain" interesting is how it derives from the film within the film. If Uttaman tricks King Mutharasan, by claiming to possess immortality, Manoranjan derives some personal mileage from his impending death. He manages to soften ties with his mentor, gets to read Yamini's letter, endears himself to his daughter born out of a wedlock, and his son. It is the awareness of his mortality that allows these characters to overcome their hard feelings against Manoranjan.

For all its seeming lack of finesse, the most interesting piece of screen writing is "within" the inner "Uttama Villain". The "Iraniyan Kadhai" does not only provide the perfect platform that deals with immortality, it is also an early Indian example of that story telling technique the patrons of ancient Greek theater despised. If Kamal dropped hints in "Dasavatharam" about the impeding dues ex machina, he does it more discreetly here. After hours of pouring over Wikipedia, reading about playwrights shifting the burden of saving the day to the almighty, it is a delight to find an example closer to home, as Mutharasan tears down a stage property to emerge out as Narasimhan, but only to be outwitted! (The realisation did not occur to me while watching the film). An admirable quality about Kamal, how he makes his political statements while simultaneously being true to his craft, unlike his playwright rationalist-political ancestors who have fallen prey to jingoism. At other places, Uttaman rues the absence of a rationalist in his village, who would have explained how he survived the snake bite, dares to invoke that pun on Lord Vishnu's name and pokes at "Arya Bhattars", and largely manages to get away with it.

And another interesting thing about "Uttama Villain" is that film's recursive structure is deftly hidden, and only surfaces due to the necessities of the characters, as opposed to "Inception" where the structure served as a metaphor. The inner "Uttama Villain" comes about because Manoranjan needs to make one final movie. The "Iraniyan Kadhai" comes about because, within the inner "Uttama Villain", Mutharasan wants to attain immortality. Chants of Mrityunjaya (The Immortal?) are peppered throughout the soundtrack, (which itself is excellent and probably Gibran's best since his debut) and appears within each story. If the difference is passage of time separated the levels in "Inception", it is the sophistication of the medium that distinguishes the levels in "Uttama Villain". When "Iraniyan Kadhai" ends with a twist ending, it provides the inner "Uttama Villain" a happy ending as the tyrant falls, which in turn provides the outer "Uttama Villain" a meaningful ending as the peripheral characters come to terms with life.

The movie is not without its imperfections. If certain scenes in "Panchatantiram" made you wish that homophones did not exist, the Tiger episode makes one wish that the inner "Uttama Villain" was staged in a grammatically rigorous language, where people unambiguously referred to themselves in third person. There is also an inconspicuous quasi-incestual undercurrent, that threatens to burst out as an April Fool's prank, but does not work because of the lack of screen presence of the person being pranked. It would be interesting to see how many believe Parvathy Nair when she tells people that she acted in this movie, especially given that Parvathi Menon also acts in this movie (the curse of homophones). If the makers took the joke seriously, they would paid more attention to detail to Nair's character (which was the least Yennai Arinthaal did to her). After the promise of Yamini's letter, Manoranjan's comes as a weak reply that further manipulates Manonmani, who already seems to have a soft corner for her biological father. If other films used Andrea as a sort of one note actress, "Uttama Villain" helps Andrea put together the three or four reactions in her acting tool kit, which means that her sermon to Selvaraghavan from Mount Moral Highground in Coffee with DD, still remains her best performance till date.

Be it in "Hey Ram", "Virumandi", "Dasvatharam" or "Vishwaroopam", Kamal's persona in the all these movie comes across to a large extent as morally upright. The Hindu fundamentalist in "Hey Ram" manages to find a redemption, the violent bull in "Virumandi" is blessed with a heart of gold, and Wissam in "Vishwaroopam" (based on the first part) ponders about his morality only to invoke "Nayakan", which itself absolved its protagonist as he stood for the greater good. The most interesting thing about Kamal Hassan's Manoranjan is how his character is freed from such moral bindings. The fact that there is more to Uravshi's adulation towards Manoranjan, and how her stubbornness keeps him away from the love of his life is revealed late into the movie. This provides a sudden edge when they meet again. While Urvashi repents for her actions asking him if he still loves him, he almost quotes from his fan's answer to a question on the Proust Questionnaire, all in the presence of the other woman in his life, of whom his wife is blissfully unaware.  Ideally, you would come to expect him to come clean to his wife about this woman. That's answered when the other woman requests him to keep this from everyone to save her own dignity, and he replies in affirmative stating that he could lie in his afterlife. With the sort of artistic immunity, or I dare say artistic immortality that this work provides, that man need not be too worried about after life.

O Kadhal Kanmani

Remember Arjun and Meera from Aayitha Ezhuthu? What if their lives did not have to collide with the worlds of Inba and Micheal? If Inba as a character lacked his privileged background or Micheal as a character showed purpose unlike him, Arjun does not exist simply a contrast to these two characters. He is a stand in for a generation of the privileged aimless yuppie youngster. Prior to O Kadhal Kanmani, the portion of Arjun and Meera represent Maniratnam's briefest foray into romantic comedy. "He has beliefs and dreams of his own. So does she. And when they like each other, do their beliefs and dreams come in the way of them jointly subscribing to a romantic ideal?". That's romantic comedy in a nutshell. Over the years and across mediums there is no dearth of romantic comedies, and it is easy to see why the ambitious Tamil film maker is reluctant to go there. Of course, Maniratnam's ambitions in Aayitha Ezhuthu are much higher. He is not content with juxtaposing a romantic comedy against the real world, he also wants to shed light on the young generation. Or may be his hands were tied, because medieval Tamil script betrayed him by not choosing ":" as the Ayitha Ezhuthu.

Ok Kanmani seems to take off from where Aayitha Ezhuthu was rudely interrupted, starting with the flamboyant opening credits oozing with optimism, that makes you forget how Kadal sank into the deep sea. And considering Maniratnam's recent work (I would also say that the first half of Kadal was indeed riveting), Ok Kanmani seems like a drastic scaling down of ambitions. And even the attempts to capture the zest for life a new generation is constrained by the fact that one of the protagonist here (Dulquer Salman as Adithya) is not only a stand in for a crowd, but as character his standing is entirely reliant on him holding to a moral compass which tells him what is cool and what is not. Subscribing to a herd mentality takes a bit of sheen out of his character (Karthik of Alaipayuthey is cool, because he stands apart from the crowd). Either Maniratnam's idea of coolness is somewhat removed from reality, or Dulquer Salman does not slip into this aspect of his character. As a result the scenes involving the yuppie crowd does not jell together with the rest of the film, and the opening scene where Aadhi makes a pitch for a new game idea seems like the best example of this dissonance.

Maniratnam seems to strike a nice balance in the stretches where Thara and Aadhi get to know each other, or the scene how Ganapathy (Prakash Raj) and Bhavani (Leela Samson) recall the interesting details of their courtship. The pacing is leisurely, and after the somewhat patchy start, sets the film on a track by establishing a mood. You see Ganapathy doing domestic chores, Bhavani being a bit clueless, and gradually get to know how Bhavani's medical condition has a role to play in all this, while simultaneously highlighting how normal it feels to be around her. It is somewhat amusing to watch Aadhi and Thara keep playing pranks on each other, and how a foreplay of words land them in bed together. But after they decide to stay together in a live-in relationship, but not forever, the rest of the film reduces to the question of whether they are going to end up together or part ways, and starts becoming too faithful to the rom-com genre. As a result, there is always something going on, but the scenes don't add up. In terms of staging the latter scenes seem to match the earlier ones, but they sort of meander aimlessly. The scene where Aadhi and Thara try to manufacture consent from Ganapathy and Bhavani could be excused, for how hilarious it is. ("You won't marry him? Unakku enna sevvai dhosama?" Leela Samson walks away with the funniest line in the film).

If the attempt was to drift along, like how the couple in Pudhu Pudhu Arthangal do, almost reflecting the protagonists attitude to life, the fact that they are not completely unhinged makes it harder (they seems to be good at their jobs, and are more ambitious than your regular Tamil hero/heroine). The entire stretch were Aadhi goes missing for a while, is entirely redundant given how it actually plays out. It seems to exist to provide Thara, a bit of soul searching about how she would seen as needy, given how they decided to move about with their lives. During the conversation with her friend, Thara tries to calm her nerves saying that she ought to provide Aadhi some space. When this scene actually played out it seemed that the film was taking itself too seriously when taking about the nature of their relationship. But on second thoughts, it is probably the director telling you, "Of course, you don't want to be subjected to the trappings of a marriage. But still a live-in relationship comes with its own trappings". Now here is a room for a Alaipayuthey like introspection, of how getting more intimate with a person makes you more aware of their flaws you were previously oblivious to ("Kadhal parpathu paathi kannil, Kalyanam parpathu naalu kannil, Naama partpathu ondrarai kannil, adiye?"). I don't know why the film does not look at this question. Maniratnam probably does not want to repeat himself here, but labours to justify the rest of the running time by providing an opportunity for Aadhi and Thara to come get over the only reason that is stopping them from being together - getting married and seeming uncool. The justification comes in the form of a poorly staged climax, where the film tries its damnedest to suddenly raise the stakes and force Aadhi to speak his mind out.

What makes Ok Kanmani still work are the performances. Restraint is something that you don't often associate with Prakashraj, but here it is a solid performance as a man worn down by the demands of life. Even when the climax plays a manipulative hand, he does not betray much of an emotion. Leela Samson in what is probably her first film role, plays a good foil. Dulquer Salman is limited by the fact that Aadhi is forced to play it too cool. This probably stems from Maniratnam's flawed understanding of his character. In rom-com terms, the resolution is brought about when he begins to show that there is more to him than the coolness, and it is in these stretches Dulquer is convincing as Aadhi.

Unlike Dulquer, Nithya Menon slips effortlessly into Thara's shoes. It is likely that Maniratnam does not need to associate an air of coolness about Thara or her co-workers. The scandalous tone to which her architect friend slips into while questioning Thara about her escapade, could only be out of a Maniratnam movie. Staging helps a lot in keeping the performance very real. Most movies suck up the leads into a world of their own for no apparent reason that can be justified in a theatre production, but not in a cinema(unless you are taking about NEPV, where the fact that they get too caught about themselves adds value to the plot). It is refreshing to see Nithya Menon react, pausing a somewhat serious conversation with Dulquer to quickly exchange a fake smile with an acquaintance who walks past them, and resume that conversation from where she left off. Or when she stares into nothing in particular either in contemplation, or when she dreamily gazes towards Aadhi but not into his eyes, because she is reluctant to break the comfort of his embrace and turn her face to see him. Nithya Menon is required to show up and not act! And she does just that. It seems at times that Thara is pushing Aadhi to the edge, like how she manipulates another man in the early portions. Take the scene at the maternity clinic for example. It is somewhat disappointing that it comes out only as a tease, and wastes Kanika in the process.

From the time Aadhi and Thara move in together, they catch glimpses of the older couple's life through a gap between a mostly closed double door. This is a recurring visual motif, and by the time Aadhi and Thara decide to marry, the audience gets a chance to view them through a similar gap in their door. But at other times, Maniratnam continues to let the cinematographer indulge, and at times the images are far too pretty and far too perfect. This is the best I have heard from Rahman since Ambikapathy, and Ok Kanmani needs those pretty pictures and songs, more than any other recent Maniratnam movie to make it work. It is lacking in finesse compared to Iruvar; lacking in ambition compared to Kadal or Ravanan; lacking as a study of relationships compared to Alaipayuthey. It probably works because of the goodwill that Maniratnam has garnered as a result of those films.

Pissaasu (Devil)

Maniratnam mentions in "Conversations with Mani Ratnam" that a film maker should ideally try to hide the structure or constructs that his film stands upon, and to him, that sets apart a great film from a merely good one. You could easily spot structure within Mysskin's scenes - set pieces that are deliberately setup and torn down. I don't know if this the structure of a film that Maniratnam talks about, but these set pieces set apart Mysskin (Baradwaj Rangan already reckons him an aueter) from his peers with a significant body of work like Selvaraghavan, Gautam Menon and Bala.

A case in point is the road accident scene, with which the film opens, showcasing an injured woman faintly smiling as if in a trance. This scene brings to fore the thematic connectedness in Mysskin's work (Anjathey and Onaanum Aatukuttiyum), playing out as an act of compassion that pivotally alters the course of a good Samaritan.

Mysskin is clearly aware that abrupt context switches don't work well in his scheme of things. He quickly dispenses with the mandatory song (the violin strains are mesmerising), and replaces flashbacks with less flashy, difficult to execute monologues that hit the high emotional notes (like the fable in Onaanum Aatukuttiyum), and Radha Ravi is in his element here. But interestingly, Mysskin stays faithful to the horror movie genre in the first half. A high rise apartment, a stalled lift, an exorcist and an autistic kid that could interact with the ghost, all the boxes are ticked. Obvious products of Mysskin's style, are the simple, but extremely beautiful visuals. The scene where 'Aavi' Amala vets the house, and momentarily stares into the exhaust, takes the cake. The film cuts into Amala peering at the exhaust, and she casually breaks her observation and gets on with her work. This was creepier than the actual scary scenes that follow.

Newcomer Naga fits the role of the protagonist perfectly. With a violin in hand, a mop of hair covering a side of his forehead, a beard, stooped shoulders that keep his head perpetually hung low, give him a eerie presence. In fact, he looks like the personification of a lost lamb (a perfect choice for Onaanum Aatukuttiyum?).

It is evident that Mysskin operates in interest of time. He perfectly times when to shift gears, and after Radha Ravi's monologue, the film changes track into a murder mystery (or an accident mystery, in this case). If the first half hammered the nail into the genre elements, the second half is more of soft nudges - Bhavani glides in and out, instead of flashing abruptly in your face. While in other films, Mysskin's set pieces existed in isolation, here he is able to tie them together in a neat rug pulling act. You can also see that the truth about the tomb, helps bring the film to a quick closure (Also the ice factory setup, my brother adds).

 The thing that struck me the most after watching Onaanum Aatukuttiyum, is how pointless the film would seem without the stylistic treatment. The only movies that I know of, that would seem pointless without the treatment are in fact, horror movies. According to my limited movie viewing experience, almost every other film Mysskin made was effectively a horror film, without the need to scare. With Pisaassu is Mysskin able to transcend the genre? The chilling tale the charlatan spins, talks of a young woman along with a foetus, buried into a well. The motive speaks of revenge for murder, and possibly rape. That's how horror movies ususally work. The ghost always wants a revenge. Changing the dynamics between the ghost and the desire to extract revenge, Mysskin caps his story with a brilliant ending. A clever way to transcend a genre is to subvert it.